OBITUARY W. Somerset Maugham, Brilliant Story-Teller

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30936, 17 December 1965, Page 8

OBITUARY W. Somerset Maugham, Brilliant Story-Teller

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LONDON, Dec. 16. Playwright, novelist and short story writer, William Somerset Maugham described himself simply as a “teller of tales.” In all three forms he always told his tales interestingly and well. It was said of him that he could not write a bad play.

Maugham himself said that his stories and novels were dramas as much as his plays were. By the time he reached 80 he had written more than 30 plays, about as many novels and volumes of short stories as well as autobiographical books.

Play-writing he called “one of the leaser arta, like wood-carving and dancing.” Some of his work for the stage has dated, but many critics have prophesied that such comedies of manners as “Our Betters” (1917) and “The Circle” (1921) may live in the English theatre as Congreve’s “The Way of the World” has lived. SECRET MISSION In the war he served first in an ambulance unit, then in intelligence and was sent

on a secret mission to Russia, but developed tuberculosis and ended the war in a aenatorium. In 1933 be stopped writing for the stage, saying he was “no longer in touch with the public,” but he went on writing successful novels and short stories which have been compared to those of Maupassant “HUMAN BONDAGE” Of his novels the autobiographical “Of Human Bondage” (1915) and “Cakes and Ale” (1930) are generally ranked highest It was as a short story writer he was universally acknowledged as brilliant He himself thought that it was bis short stories that would keep his name alive. Several of his stories and novels were adapted for the stage, many were filmed, and one of his novels, “The Moon and Sixpence,” was made into an opera. SARDONIC, MISTRUSTFUL A dramatic critic wrote of him: “His humour was sardonic, his attitude towards the virtues mistrustful, his romanticism that of one who had discovered with a certain wry pleasure that there was precious little in it; and if he gave the public what it liked—a good story—it was what he liked himself. Maugham kept his public for three generations and the sale of his works numbered tens of millions.

He was reputed to be one of the world’s richest writers, but he did not forget his early struggles and established an annual award to enable a young writer to travel.

Bora of British parents in Paris on January 25, 1874, and educated in England and Germany, Maugham was a great traveller and his cosmopolitan outlook ensured him international readership. AT HEIDELBERG His first play was performed in Germny while he was a student at Heidelberg. Returning to London, he studied medicine and qualified as a doctor, but apart from a year as an intern in the London alums did not practise. He published his first novel, “Liza of Lambeth,’’ in 1897. Ten years of novel-writing followed and earned him a bare living. Financial success came only when ho returned to the stage. “Of Human Bondage,” finished just as World War I

broke out, founded Maugham’s reputation as a novelist. In World War H, after special work for the British Ministry of Information in Paris, he escaped from the Riviera at the time of the fall of France in a coal bout crowded with refugees. He spent the rest of the war in the United States, returning to his viHa at Cap Ferrat in 1946. PLEASED HIMSELF After publishing “Catalina” in 1947 he announced that he would produce no more novels and would write to please himself. In January, 1958, abortly before his eighty-fourth birthday, he told an interviewer that be was finishing a collection of essays entitled “Points of View,” after which he would give up writing—“this time for good.” In 1916, Maugham married Lady Wellcome, a widow and the daughter of the philanthropist, Dr. James Barnardo. The marriage was dissolved in 1929 and Mrs Maugham died in 1955. They had one daughter, Elizabeth, who married Lord John Hope.

LEGAL ACTION Soon after the sale of his collection of impressionist paintings in 1963, a protracted dispute began between Mr Maugham and his daughter, who secured a London court order blocking the proceeds of nine of the pictures which she claimed her father had given her. The legal battle ended with a settlement out of court three days before Maugham’s ninetieth birthday. On his birthday Mangham declared: “There is nothing to be proud about in being 90.” On his ninety-first birthday his comment was: “Oh hell, another birthday.” MANY HONOURS Somerset Maugham was made a Companion of Honour by Queen Elizabeth in 1954. He was a commander of the French Legion of Honour and held honorary degrees of doctor of letters of Oxford and Toulouse Universities. He was a fellow of the Library of Congress, Washington, and an honorary member of the United States National Society of Arts and Letters. He was also ona of Britain’a first five Companions of Literature and the first Englishman to become an honorary senator of Heidelberg University. (Report, Plage 17)